The Search for the USS Johnston - Full Dive Video - Part One

Many viewers of our channel expressed a desire to see far more of the historic dive to the wreck of the USS Johnston, at the time of its discovery the deepest shipwreck ever surveyed at 6,460 meters.
This video, with only limited editing to shorten the (2-2.5 hour) descent and ascent portions, show the vast majority of the search on the bottom of the ocean to locate the Johnston. The strategy was to descend to the depth where Robert Kraft and his team at Vulcan originally found destroyer wreckage using ROV's in 2019, and when the main debris field was located, to descend even further down to hopefully find the main wreck of the ship.
The ROVs on the Vulcan expedition could not safely descend below 6000 meters, but the submersible Limiting Factor has an infinite depth rating and thus could proceed as deep as necessary to find the main wreck. We did not know how deep it might be, if it was still in one pieces, or what the condition of the wreck would be.
I (Victor Vescovo) was the pilot of the submersible on this dive, and my co-pilot and sub engineer was Shane Eigler of Canada and a key person on the submersible technical team.
By watching this video, one can see just how long it can take to find something on the bottom of the seafloor - even when you are lucky - and sometimes the monotony of seeing nothing but blank seafloor for hour after hour. However, when you get the first hints of wreckage, and come upon them and try to figure out what it is, things get very exciting, very quickly . . . I won't hold it against you if you fast-forward to the section where we first encounter the wreckage and follow it down.
So . . . please enjoy this more or less unabridged video of our time on the bottom when we first discovered the main wreckage of the USS Johnston on March 31st, 2021.